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| Politics
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| Rice warns against Armenia bill |
| The Bush administration has urged the US Congress not to pass a resolution declaring the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire to be genocide
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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 10-October-2007
10:28:12 AM |
| Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates made a joint appeal hours before a vote by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Ms Rice said the passing of the resolution would be "very problematic" for US policy in the Middle east.
US ally Turkey disputes the scale of the 1915-1917 massacre.
Armenia alleges that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed in an organised campaign to force them out of what is now eastern Turkey.
That is strongly denied by Turkey which says that large numbers of Turks and Armenians were killed in the chaos surrounding World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire when Armenians rose up.
Turkish indignation
The bill must be approved by the Foreign Affairs Committee before it can be debated on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Even if it passes and is then adopted by the House, the bill will not be binding. President George W Bush has made clear that he also opposes it.
But the BBC's Sarah Rainsford, in Istanbul, says that such a nuance will have little impact on the reaction in Turkey.
Ankara has pulled out all the stops to prevent the genocide resolution reaching Congress for a vote, she adds.
Politicians have travelled to Washington to lobby lawmakers, while the country's prime minister and president have both contacted Mr Bush.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul warned of "serious problems that will emerge in bilateral relations if the bill is adopted".
All this comes on top of mounting anger that the US is not doing enough to counter the Kurdish separatist PKK group, which mounts deadly attacks on Turkey from inside Iraq, our correspondent says.
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